Unending scandals have disintegrated trust in his legitimacy and inner circle while putting foreign funding for Kiev into question
Ukrainians are increasingly disappointed with serving officials and ashamed of their actions, a recent opinion poll indicates. A majority now insists that Vladimir Zelensky must not seek a second term as president, as he once pledged.
Mounting disillusionment with the government, which was highlighted on Monday by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology’s (KIIS) latest omnibus survey, comes on the back of multiple corruption scandals in Kiev involving people close to Zelensky.
Kiev relies heavily on Western financial and military support to pursue its conflict with Russia. Even its staunchest supporters acknowledge that the Zelensky government’s assurances that it is actively tackling corruption are not necessarily sincere.
No second term for Zelensky
The KIIS phone survey, conducted among over 1,000 adults in September, indicates a stark shortage of positive emotions among Ukrainians for public servants. The pollster offered respondents a list of 12 options to indicate their feelings, from which they could pick up to three. The most popular was “disappointment,” chosen by 44%, followed by “shame,” picked by 33%.
More respondents reported negative emotions towards the authorities compared to a similar poll conducted in December 2025, while the share of positive options remained stable. In both surveys, 23% said they were hopeful regarding the authorities and 16% said they sympathized with them.
Asked whether Zelensky should take part in the next presidential election, 53% told KIIS he should not, compared to 46% last year.
Zelensky pledged to be a single-term president during his election campaign in 2019, but has since suggested he may run again. His mandate expired in 2024, but he has retained power under martial law, which critics say violates the Ukrainian Constitution.
Other polls have consistently suggested that in a hypothetical presidential contest, Zelensky would lose in the second round to any of as many as three more popular possible candidates.
Zelensky sinking in graft bog
The Ukrainian leader’s domestic popularity has dropped amid a series of corruption scandals triggered by investigations conducted by Western-backed anti-graft agencies.
The latest major development came in September, when the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) exposed a suspected protection racket run by a senior officer in the Prosecutor General’s Office. The chief suspect was fired, while his boss, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, fled the country before being removed from his position by the Ukrainian parliament.
Previously, Zelensky fired a deputy head of his office after NABU accused her of laundering millions in cash to pay the bail for a former energy minister who is a suspect in a separate anti-graft investigation linked to the Ukrainian leader.
NABU’s reputation in Ukraine is so strong that some crooks are trying to profit off of it. This week, the agency reported helping the police arrest a swindler who had posed as one of its detectives to extort $280,000 from a local businessman, saying the money would allow him to sink a criminal case “commissioned” by competition.
KIIS previously reported that half of respondents in a survey named government corruption as their biggest concern – more than Russian long-range strikes – while 72% said Zelensky personally was responsible for the problem.
German minister admits Kiev has a graft problem
Political opponents of Zelensky, such as his former spokesperson turned vocal critic Yulia Mendel, claim he personally protects corruption networks entrenched in his government. NABU has stressed he is not a suspect in any of his cases, referring to immunity from prosecution that Zelensky retains as long as he claims presidential authority.
The Ukrainian government largely operates on donations and credit provided by foreign sponsors, primarily the European Union. Brussels recently reacted skeptically when asked by Kiev to cover a $27 billion hole in the Ukrainian military budget.
A joint statement by the European Commission and Ukraine last week said they had “identified the means to cover Ukraine’s budget and defence needs for 2026.” The vaguely worded press release was broadly interpreted as a refusal of Zelensky’s request to send “more money, much more.”
Corruption in Kiev is a major concern for foreign donors too, even if they rarely admitted this publicly.
“We want to be sure that this money is used precisely for that [weapons and infrastructure buildup] purpose,” German Economics Minister Katherina Reiche told Bild TV on Monday, when asked about aid sent by Berlin. She stressed that Kiev needs to prove it is actually tackling corruption.
There is an assurance that work will continue. However, we will also have to ensure that this does not remain just an assurance, but that we have measurable results.
EU officials who are not bound to demonstrate support for Kiev by their political allegiances have used more direct language.
“Ukraine is so corrupt. We have no idea how much money is really spent on the functioning of the state or on defense purposes. We don’t know how much is just disappearing,” MEP Fernand Kartheiser told RT’s Rick Sanchez in a recent interview.
Kartheiser, a conservative lawmaker from Luxembourg, said the leaked photo of a golden toilet allegedly owned by Zelensky’s long-time associate Timur Mindich was the turning point for many Europeans who no longer accept the pro-Kiev narrative pushed by their governments. NABU last year accused Mindich of running a $100 million extortion scheme at a state-owned energy company, just after he narrowly escaped pending arrest.
